Guest Interview – Adventures of an English Mum

This week’s guest post comes from Emma, travel blogger behind Adventures of an English Mum. She explains ‘I started out as a parent blogger with a travel flavour but as the kids have grown up they no longer want me to talk about them so we’ve done a switcheroo and now it’s mainly travel and days out with a little bit of parenting! We love travel, days out, weekends away both in the UK and further afield as and when we can. We are lucky enough to live on the doorstep of the National Forest so we have fabulous scenery, walks and plenty of outdoors right in front of our noses. I am a camper, open water swimmer, very slow jogger, national truster and am dram luvvie. When I have time I’m trying to do some good in the world an put something back so am trying to raise money for the Alzheimer’s and Stroke Societies’

1. What is your name and where do you come from?

My name is Emma Kilby-Brooks, better known as Adventures of an English Mum, and orginially I’m from Leicestershire but I’ve also lived in Somerset, Lincolnshire, Germany and California which is definitely my spiritual home.

2. What sort of traveller are you? Full time / part time / business / backpacker etc?

These days I’m a part time, family traveller but I’m a full time backpacker at heart really.

3. How do you fund your travelling?

I have a full time job but am lucky enough to have extra holiday buy out so I get more holiday than most people and try to plan around this. When I was younger I mainly worked from place to place and saw the world that way.

4. Where is the best place you have ever been and why?

Oh gosh! That’s such a difficult one. I have lots of best places that I love – Las Vegas, London, Cornwall, New York, the Lake District. However if I had to narrow it down I’d go with the following:

Paris because it’s mine and my husband’s special place and what’s not to love? Amazing food, museums, architecture, culture, Disney, eating ice cream at the Place des Voges or Croissants in front of the Sacre Coeur. I could spend hours and days just wandering around drinking it all in.

Secondly, it would have to be Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. What an absolute culture shock and such an interesting mix of East and West. I was lucky enough to have my own private driver and tour guide who gave me a tour of the city, took me to local restaurants, drove me out to the cu chi tunnels (incredible but very scary!!) and to the most amazing Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh. An unbelievable trip all round and highly recommended.

5. Where is the worst place you have ever been and why?

Probably the worst place I have ever been to is a small town called Seaside in California. I drove for 8 hours in torrential rain to get there, getting a flat tyre along the way. When we arrived the hotel was terrible, run down, paper thin walls and it sounded like people were being murdered in the room next door. When we left town our hire car died and we were stuck with no phone on an American freeway!! I learned a few lessons that trip about at least glancing at online reviews before you book a random hotel………..

6. Do you have a Bucket List? If so where are the 3 top places on it?

St Petersburg, Russia

Santorini, Greece

Dubrovnik, Croatia

7. What 3 things (apart from the essentials – food/water etc) do you always travel with?

Phone charger as that’s my main camera

Old school map

Guidebook

8. What makes you happy and why?

Obviously travelling but also blogging and taking old style holidays with my family. We ensure that we go on at least one family camping trip per year where everyone has to step away from their electronics and enjoy being together in nature. I’m sure the kids favourite thing about camping is toasting marshmallows over an open fire! I also a massive fan of open water swimming and am a real water baby so most of my pictures seem to be made up of me in a wetsuit or lakes, rivers or the ocean!

9. How long have you been blogging and why did you start?

I’ve been blogging for 7 or 8 years now. I started out as a Mummy blogger with some travel features but as the kids have gotten older that’s organically switched to being more about travel than a traditional family blog.

10. What makes your blog unique and why should people read it?

I would like to think that what makes my blog unique is that we are just a typical family doing things our own way. I’m not a budget traveller but we do have to take money into consideration. I’m honest about what we’ve found fun and how much things have cost and try to give as much information as possible so that if anyone else is inspired to follow in our footsteps they know what they are getting into.

From ESLT – thank you Emma for taking the time to answer our questions. Safe Travels 🙂

1 Comment

Love the idea of travelling with your ‘old school map’ – it’s the sort of thing we would do, not sure technology could ever replace a good proper map !

Vicky & Chris

Thanks for joining us (Vicky & Chris, a married couple from Yorkshire, England) as we Eat, Sleep, Love and Travel our way around the world! Between us, we have been to 75 countries (long may the list grow!)

We have been travelling together since January 2007 when we took our first trip only two weeks from our first meeting to Florence, Italy.